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B2B Agility with Greg Kihlström™: MarTech, E-Commerce, & Customer Success
#25: Customer-led growth with Elisabeth Zornes, Chief Customer Officer,Autodesk
00:27:25
Today we’re going to talk about the strategies for driving customer-led growth with Elisabeth Zornes, Chief Customer Officer at Autodesk. We’ll explore how converging customer-facing departments enhance customer success and the role of technology...
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- [00:01]
Elizabeth Zorns
The Agile brand.
- [00:08]
Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to the B2B Agility Podcast where we look at the factors that drive success in B2B marketing with a focus on the people, processes, data and platforms that make B2B brands stand out and thrive in a competitive marketplace. I'm your host, Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, marketing operations and CX, bestselling author and speaker. Now let's get on to the show. Today we're going to talk about the strategies for driving customer led growth with Elizabeth Zorns, Chief Customer Officer at Autodesk. We're going to explore how converging customer facing departments enhances customer success and the role of technology in shaping these experiences. Elizabeth, welcome to the show.
- [00:54]
Elizabeth Zorns
Thank you so much, Greg. It's delightful to be here.
- [00:58]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, looking forward to talking about this topic with you. Definitely top of mind for a lot of people out there. So before we dive in, why don't you give us a little bit of your background and what led to your role as Chief Customer Officer at Autodesk.
- [01:12]
Elizabeth Zorns
Yeah, happy to do that, Greg. So throughout my career there was one ongoing theme I'm really passionate about and that is the customer and leveraging technology and customer engagement to drive a better cx. So throughout my career I've led global teams focused on that customer experience and retention in a number of high tech companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Zendesk and now Autodesk. And it's really about focusing on creating that irresistible customer experience and creating a customer centric culture for our customers.
- [01:51]
Greg Kilstrom
Great. So, yeah, let's dive in here. And first I want to talk about defining customer success. But to do that, I'd love to hear what is your definition of customer success and what does that mean to you at Autodesk?
- [02:09]
Elizabeth Zorns
Yeah, absolutely, Greg. And it starts with the, that my belief is customers don't just buy products, they buy outcomes and they buy experiences. And when we remember this, we build those lasting, trusted partnerships. Now, at Autodesk, it all starts again with a customer. When we look at our customers, these are some of the most advanced designers, builders, and we are helping them to achieve the best outcomes by leveraging highly advanced technologies. So that means you start with the customer and you start with the outcome. You want to really deeply understand what are their needs, what are they focused on, what do they need to accomplish, and then building those experiences to get the most value out of their engagement. And that's really what customer success at Autodesk is all about, is understanding those outcomes, listening to the customers, and then helping them to get the best value.
- [03:09]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. And so building on that definition, how does that guide the strategies and initiatives that are implemented across the company?
- [03:19]
Elizabeth Zorns
Yeah, great question, Greg. And you know, it starts with deep listening. We have a whole practice that is focused on the voice of the customer and you know, pulling in information through a number of different listening posts. And that could be, you know, actual engagements with customers, could be surveys, could be anything that is mentioned, you know, on social, email, chat and so forth and then driving analytics from that. So that is one of the key pillars. The second one is the understanding that CX really is a team sport. So it's not just one organization accountable for, you know, customer success or customer experience. It's really about, you know, crafting those experiences in a thoughtful way and then engaging the various teams. And that can be across marketing, customer success, the sales team. Anybody who has an engagement with a customer needs to be part of it. So it's really a team sport that we are focusing on.
- [04:22]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. So, and I love the, the emphasis on the team part of that too because too often I think I, I hear about companies that are, you know, the customer and you know, whether it's customer success, customer experience, whatever it may be, okay, that's their job, you know, that's, it's not my job. So, you know, in addition to that or even like building on that, you know, what are the, what are some of the key elements of delivering an irresistible customer experience that fosters this kind of customer led growth?
- [04:56]
Elizabeth Zorns
Yeah, absolutely. And there is some art and science in that. I would say. Today's customers are so much more sophisticated, empowered and informed and they will compare you with the best experience they ever had. So for that it's really important that we do understand and are thoughtful on what is that experience in crafting that and building that personalized and seamless. Some attributes that jump to mind to really helping address the customer where they are in the journey with the content and the information they are looking for. The other attribute would be, you know, empathy and understanding those, those needs and the outcome that the customer is looking for. And then I would say continuous improvement. So that's the fun of customer experience. Is this a topic? Yes, that is evolving pretty quickly and gives us the ability to do innovation, agile engagement, agile testing and innovating jointly with our customers. And that's a lot of fun.
- [06:04]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. And so to deliver on this, I mean, you mentioned several things there, several components of it. One pretty big component of being able to deliver personalized experience and even better understanding your Customers is having the right data and not only collecting it, but being able to use it. And so, you know, I want to talk a little bit more about that as well and get your thoughts on, you know, what is the role of collecting and managing the right customer data in delivering and creating those, those effective customer experiences.
- [06:38]
Elizabeth Zorns
Yeah, Greg, you're hitting on, you know, one of the core topics that really helps us to create an irresistible customer experience. I often think as of data as liquid gold, you want to gather as much as good data as possible, but it only gets the real value once you coin it into currency. And that is, you know, the insights, the actions and the goals. So, for example, you know, there are several aspects of data we want to think about for a customer experience. One is data about the customer. So the whole who is the customer, the account, you know, what type of how, how are they planning to use your product, in our case, the software, what is it and what do they need? The second part is the how, how do they engage with, you know, your product with your software and then how do they use it? And both pieces of the data together can actually give you deep insights, not only on a reactive side to say, you know, what is it that happened and what could have gone better, but also on a proactive side. So it's really that art and the science, the science of capturing, aggregating, analyzing the data and then the art of asking the right question at the right time to really, you know, coin that data into currency.
- [08:05]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, I love that, that metaphor there. That's a great. I may, I may borrow that at some point. So just. Thank you for. And I think with, with data there, you touched on some, some interesting things. And I'm going to get back to some of it, some of the other parts as well. But, you know, it's. I find it's not difficult to collect data. In fact, I think most companies are swimming in data. They're just not necessarily, it's not necessarily the right data that they should be collecting or is useful or there's barriers to accessing it and all of that. And so how do you know when you have the right data in place? How do you measure and assess the effectiveness of the data that you have?
- [08:53]
Elizabeth Zorns
Yeah, and that goes back to the art and the science, right there is the science of capturing and making sure that you are thoughtful around the different dimensions and all the pivots of the data you want to collect and the usual methodologies one would deploy and data cleansing and correlation, all the rest of the good stuff. But then there is the art. And the art will lead you then to asking the right questions. For example, it's helpful to identify out of your data common problems and answers. That's pretty basic. These are the questions the customer asked or these are the areas where they get stuck. And what are some of the answers we would provide the most, you know, commonly asked questions and the answers to it that's, you know, helpful, but it becomes spectacular if you can guide a customer through their learning journey knowing, you know, what the profile is of the customer, what type of user is it, what are they using the software for and what is it likely that they would want to do at their next steps of the journey. And then as you do that, you know, delivering insights that are really game changing for that customer and then measuring the output of it. For example, if you guide them on a learning journey, are they taking you up on it? Are they taking the insights you provide to them? Are they really making that next click on that learning asset? Are they consuming it? Do I find them more proficient after they do that? So these are some of the ways where you can then measure the impact and say, hey, not only did I collect good data, but I coined it or converted it into insights that really, you know, are effective in making a change.
- [10:47]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, it sounds to me like it's collecting and being able to tell a story with the data rather than just saying, okay, we got, you know, this many people logged into the app or, you know, clicked on the button or whatever. It's like actually telling the story of they, this, this customer was able to accomplish this important task. Is that kind of what you're saying?
- [11:09]
Elizabeth Zorns
Yeah, I think it goes from collection to analytics to insights to action. And you want to go the whole, you want to be able to make that full swing and then really proving to say along your digital thread that you created, you were able to get all the way to the action and the impact.
- [11:36]
Greg Kilstrom
So when you look at things like customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, what are the tools and the, you know, the metrics that you consider essential there?
- [11:47]
Elizabeth Zorns
Yeah, no, a great question, Greg. And I would say they're obviously the usual suspects, right. Net promoter scores, transactional satisfaction service and all the rest of it, I consider them as data points on the journey that give you particular insights. And you know, that are some of you, some of the tools in your tool chest. We are going beyond that because we really want to understand what is the value we are creating for our customer and does it really make an impact to them. So we have a Metrics for our enterprise account or with our enterprise accounts. We're calling it customer verified value. And what that is, is we are establishing at the beginning of the journey with our customers some goals, for example, productivity goals that they want to achieve by leveraging Autodesk software to design more effectively or to drive more effective projects. So we want to be able to establish that jointly with our customers. And once we do that, then we go back in our quarterly reviews in our QBRs with them and say, how much progress have we, how much have we moved the needle on a customer verified value perspective? And we are looking at that on a customer by customer basis. It's a very effective tool to have a conversation as well, like, how much are we contributing to you? Which makes it so much easier when you then talk about renewing and expanding, of course. But also as an organization, we aggregate it up and there are goals and targets I've set for the team for that enterprise segment. It's a $1.2 billion number of customer verified value that we want to generate this year. And that means a value that customer basically underwrite and say, yes, Autodesk, you created that value for me and for my business. And that's very powerful as an organization as well. You'll never have to go back and question like, you know, what's our contribution? It's very much there and underwritten by the customer.
- [13:59]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah, well. And of course, that customer is not just on a single platform either, and probably interacting, whether it's interacting with customer service or the application itself. And so the Omnichannel customer presents some challenges to a lot of organizations to really make sure that all the teams and departments and silos kind of know what's going on where and building that integrated experience. How do you think about engagement with customers across all those different channels so that they don't feel like it's a disconnected experience?
- [14:46]
Elizabeth Zorns
Yeah, I would say, Greg, this is really the holy grail. Right? So to create a digital thread, a digital engagement with a customer that allows them to choose on how you engage or allows you to choose on how to proactively engage. The industry, I think I would say, is still working on that. So this is a work in progress. Even in excellent B2C experiences, which sometimes are further ahead than our B2B experience, there are still improvements to be made. For example, I have to log back into the account, into my account to get anything done or to find information and things like that. It doesn't necessarily seamlessly recognize me. But what that is really is we want to create the same experience, recognize the customer through different ways on how they reach it and pick up that thread and preserving that. And that's different than multi channel. Multi channel just tells us the customer can use multiple channels. But the omnichannel experience really ties it together. I would say that's a work in progress across the industry and we are experimenting and exploring on, on how to, how to do that best.
- [16:02]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of companies are right there as well. And you know, and to that end, a lot of times making the, making that seamless connection internally is just, you know, there's works in progress. Many organizations are undergoing transformations to make that more seamless. But sometimes in the meantime, cross team collaboration, you know, kind of the people doing some of the stuff behind the scenes can make a big difference in your experience, you know, in, you know, in the companies that you've worked for, how have you seen ways to improve some of these disconnects from the customer end with just better cross team collaboration?
- [16:47]
Elizabeth Zorns
Yeah, it's an excellent topic and one I have a lot of passion about. I mentioned earlier, I'm thinking about CX as a team sport and one great example you could compare it with, it would be in the racing sport, a pit crew. The racing car comes in, we change the tires. They are different team members with different tasks and different crafts that all come together seamlessly and rally at the right time, at the right place and get the job done and get the race car back on the road. I think it's an excellent analogy for what we need to do. Similarly, why do pit crews get so great? Because they have aligned goals and they practice together and then they celebrate their successes. There's that big celebration at the end. I think all of that is needed. So we need the alignment of the goals, we need the practice and, and then we need to also celebrate the passion for the customer. For us in real life, we are not always a pit crew in one place. So we need that data thread as well that allows us to come together at the right time, capture the information, pass it on. When sales has a conversation with a customer, customer success, for example, wants to know it. When customer success identifies an opportunity with a customer, you know, maybe marketing, you know, wants to follow up and that is that data thread that we need to pull through for our real life pit crews as we engage with our customers.
- [18:22]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah, and I like that the, the pit crew analogy as well. And you know, that kind of brings to every member of the team obviously needs to work with one another. But they also need motivation of their own. You know, they need some intrinsic motivation to make the customer first and all that kind of stuff. What strategies should you employ to make customer experience and customer success a central part of every employee's job?
- [18:52]
Elizabeth Zorns
Yeah, that's such a great point, Greg. And there is nothing more powerful than direct customer feedback. When you think about situations you might have experienced yourself and then you hear it directly from the customer. What works for them, what doesn't work for them, that is really dynamite, you know, that is. There is a lot of power in that. So we are trying to wherever we can bring customers into the fold. Might it be for all hand meetings for testimonials for things like that and allowing more people, even if they not frontline customer engaged, to hear feedback from the customer. The second piece I learned that during my time at Microsoft, they invited actually was a mandatory part of your onboarding journey for the product teams, for all of the executives to sit with customer support and listen into customer calls. So that was a firm part of the onboarding journey and that allows, you know, to really create that empathy. So because when customer, you know, when customer call in, in that situation, they're struggling with something in the product, it's not that they don't necessarily call you to congratulate you how great your software is, but there is something that they actually need and that creates the empathy and the connection to say what I do as I write the code really matters in the daily lives of my customers. So that is very powerful and that is a technique which is simple to do, but people talk about it and it really is ingrained in their memories on how they felt when they listened into that customer conversation.
- [20:45]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, I think that I've heard that a few places that do that and I think it's such a powerful way of building that empathy and building it quickly, especially if it's part of your onboarding experience. So, yeah, so I want to switch topics a little bit here. I always make the joke of I feel like it's a requirement to talk about AI in every conversation. So we're going to do just that here as we're starting to wrap things up. But I wanted to talk. AI has a lot of potential. Certainly there's a lot of hype, but I believe it also has a lot of potential. We talk a lot about on this show and my other show, we talk a lot about how it enhances efficiencies and even helps with some creative endeavors and stuff like that. But I want to Focus more this part of the conversation on using AI to build better customer relationships. And so how do you look at AI being integrated into an organizational strategy to enhance not only the customer insights that help you understand them, but also the recommendations and things that actually make that better experience?
- [21:59]
Elizabeth Zorns
Yeah, I would say AI is definitely a rapidly evolving topic and personally I enjoy it quite a bit to explore what we might be able to do with it. The lens we are looking at, it is really to enhance human ingenuity, to empower more people to do better work, to design and make anything, to enable the humans to focus on the most strategic, creative and impactful. And that's true for our customers and that's true for our own teams. So we are using an agile experimentation approach with regards to AI in two areas. One is improving our own productivity and the second one is improving customer outcomes. And what we do is we have actually we did a hackathon with our teams to say, come up with ideas on how we might be able to improve our own productivity or enhance customer outcomes. And then there was a list of different projects that came to the forefront that we are now taking with a team, the innovation hub that is taking an active experimentation approach. And there are a number of things that kind of roll through that pipeline and then they are being deployed. And it's actually a beautiful thing because the team is participating in that process. We are not doing AI to them, we are doing AI with them. We are doing it together and coming up with those great ideas. They are part of the ideation. Then we have the testing and then the ideas that turn out to be successful. We roll it out, we implement it. That has created a really positive dynamic where people want to come, they want to do more, there's a hunger to do more and to do more experimentation.
- [23:50]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, I love that because I mean exactly what you just said. It's not this top down like do AI and then and people are kind of, or there's somebody buys a product that has AI in it and everyone just needs to again do AI, whatever that means, but really involving people in the process. So yeah, I mean I would imagine that also more quickly shows some of the areas worth worth exploring more and maybe some of the areas to avoid. So yeah, I mean that's that. So how, how long have, have you been doing that?
- [24:29]
Elizabeth Zorns
So we started about, I want to say a year ago when you know, we had the first initial AI capabilities and we did, you know, the, the more basic things initially to say, okay, include AI capabilities into our chat to move from providing content to having a conversation and providing answers. So that in itself, you know, was, was a lot of fun and we continue to build on that. And now we are using AI, you know, in a number of other experimentations. For example, you know, leveraging language, real time language translation in new and different ways, providing AI insights to our customer success managers to prepare them for the best conversation they could have with a customer with the right information across so many different data sources and making recommendation about the conversation they could have. All the way to providing customer outcomes and value where we give customers insight to say, across all the projects, you know, you're doing in Autodesk or with Autodesk software, where are the areas where you could optimize? And these things are super valuable. We have a lot of momentum around that.
- [25:45]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah, that's great to hear. Well, Elizabeth, thanks so much for joining today. One last question for you, maybe two questions for you. I'll ask two at once here. Looking ahead, you know, what do you see as far as some major trends that are influencing customer experience and customer led growth and how are you preparing to adapt?
- [26:09]
Elizabeth Zorns
So I would say we see and continue to see customer expectations grow exponentially. And that gives us a beautiful playing field to continuously innovate with new technologies, with AIs and jointly with a customer and do that and having fun while doing it.
- [26:29]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. Love it, love it. That's great. Well, again, I'd like to thank Elizabeth Zorns, Chief Customer Officer at Autodesk, for joining us today. You can learn more about Elizabeth and Autodesk by following the links in the show notes. Thanks again for listening to the B2B Agility podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show more easily. You can access more episodes of the show at www.b2bagility.com. That's B2B agility.com. while you're there, check out my series of best selling agile brand guides covering a wide variety of marketing technology topics. Or you can search for Greg Kilstrom on Amazon. Until next time, stay focused and stay agile.
- [27:19]
Elizabeth Zorns
The agile brand.